<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>before the bridges end by tidelinear</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25541722">before the bridges end</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tidelinear/pseuds/tidelinear'>tidelinear</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dimension 20 (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:47:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,339</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25541722</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tidelinear/pseuds/tidelinear</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Two days before Saccharina’s coronation, Ruby soars above Castle Manylicks.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Saccharina Frostwhip &amp; Ruby Rocks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Dimension 20 Fic Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>before the bridges end</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/celaenos/gifts">celaenos</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>heads up that i have taken just shameless liberties with the mechanics of familiars and that i would do it again! happy fic exchange, celaenos, i hope you enjoy. title from ars poetica by m&amp;o</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The cold slices through Ruby’s layers with precision, the stinging kind that shocks the lungs with every breath. Around her, the cavern is too bright for her to cast a shadow, much like the ice cream temple. The walls are similar to the ice cream temple as well, frosted over and — Ruby’s breath catches in her throat she hears the rumble of a moving platform. </p><p>Ruby runs, and the ground beneath her feet goes from packed dirt to blood red and frosted with fractal flakes. She skids to a halt before she plunges off the edge of the plinth, fingers of mist lapping at her ankles. Something blinks into Ruby's awareness mere feet away and she whirls around to face it.</p><p>Welcome home, the Sugar Plum Fairy purrs and Ruby’s breath sticks painfully in her throat.</p><p>How did you call me back here, Ruby shouts. How are you alive!</p><p>The Fairy flies higher in a whorl of snow and ice. Cold air rushes in and Ruby looks up to see cavern walls that stretch higher than she remembers and above them all, a broad sweep of stars across the night sky. The plinth she’s on rumbles, then rises, keeping pace with the Fairy. Momentum drops Ruby to one knee and she holds on grimly, shivering.</p><p>How am I back here, Ruby calls again, insistent, and one of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s faces turns to frown at her.</p><p>Oh Ruby, it says. You wanted to come back. </p><p>Panic grips her by the throat. Ruby had thought, hadn’t she, about how easy it would have been to follow that beloved whisper into the mist, to hold Jet again, to apologize, to just see her, smiling. Had Ruby brought herself back? She still doesn’t understand everything Liam had said, about Lapin and Preston, but could the Sugar Plum Fairy even really die, if she’d only been a spell and not a god at all?</p><p>The Fairy flickers away.</p><p>A presence at Ruby’s side, and she recoils from the gust of wind created by six wings beating at once. A whisper in her ear over the noise: I’m so glad you’re coming home.</p><p>I don’t want to go home with you, Ruby screams, nearly falling backward in her haste to get away. I <em> didn’t </em> go home with you! </p><p>She fumbles for Flickerish and takes her first deep breath as she feels it at her waist. The wrought basket is as real and constant as Jet’s love, and Ruby finally feels steady enough to think. She needs to find Saccharina, needs to get her to get Ruby close enough to take out the Fairy again. She’ll plunge Flickerish through the Fairy's miserable heart as many times as she needs to. </p><p>Oh Ruby, the whisper comes. Saccharina hates me. <em> She </em> didn’t want to come back.</p><p>Neither did I, you four-eyed bitch. Ruby grips the sword tighter and calls for Saccharina. She doesn’t expect a response, not really, not after all this, but the silence sits like a stone in her stomach. </p><p>I’m choosing to ignore that, because that was <em> very </em> mean. The Sugar Plum Fairy hovers, just out of range. Your so-called queen won't hear you.</p><p>I thought you wanted to protect Candia’s magic, Ruby says through gritted teeth.</p><p>I <em> do</em>, the Sugar Plum Fairy vows, eyes wide.</p><p>Then why not protect her, she’s more magical than any of us.</p><p>She <em> stole </em> from me, the Fairy howls. There’s a shriek like metal scraping against itself and in the time it takes Ruby to cover her ears, the plinth snaps in half underneath her and she plummets straight down, her stomach in her throat, unable to scream, tears streaming upward as she struggles to keep her eyes open. The passage opens up suddenly and Ruby's squinting against the bright light as she falls and hits ground that isn’t ground at all, that is wall, and she doesn’t know how she fell downward and landed on a wall, but there’s a dizzying moment where the world reorients itself ninety degrees and she crashes against the floor.</p><p>She catches her breath, cherry ice sticking to her cheek. She doesn't know if the Fairy can hear her but she lifts her head, spits, Fucking good, I'm <em>happy</em> she did.</p><p>I suppose you would be, the Fairy sighs, carried by a rush of wind in the cavern. She is your sister.</p><p>She's the queen. </p><p>Oh Ruby, the Fairy says, in her ear and syrupy sweet. Ruby startles, crawls away on scraped knees, scrabbling for Flickerish, for Sour Scratch, for anything. The whisper follows her: I know why you’re really pushing her away.</p><p>Why's that, Ruby says, her hand closing around a hilt. She tenses, but though the cavern is well-lit, it's empty except for them; there's nothing to distract the Fairy so Ruby can sneak in close.</p><p>The Sugar Plum Fairy appears in front of Ruby in a crack of cold. You must dread having another sister to fail.</p><p>Ruby is already lunging forward. Humming with green arcane fire, Flickerish drives into the Sugar Plum Fairy, and dissipates. </p><p>Ruby’s heart stops, that starts up again staccato as she stares in shock at where the blade was, then at the Fairy’s spinning faces, all smiling terribly.</p><p>Oh dear, many voices whisper and Ruby’s in the dark, something heavy on her neck and she tries to pull in air, can’t, can’tcan’tcan’t, can’t get away, being held down, who the fuck is crying — she’s sitting, she’s upright, she’s got something heavy on her left shoulder, gentle pecks to the side of her head, she’s in bed, she’s in the quarters she was given in Castle Manylicks after defeating the Sugar Plum Fairy, who is dead.   </p><p>Yak coos as softly as a hawk can, a gruff sound overall. </p><p>Ruby turns her face into unfamiliar but reassuring weight on her shoulder, her throat scratching painfully. “Okay,” she says into his soft butterscotch feathers. “Okay, let’s get out of here.”</p><hr/><p>For all that Finding Yak was a thrilling part of growing her magic and then a tangible fuck you to the system that tore down her family, Ruby hasn’t spent much time near him. He’s more independent than Sprinkle or Princess, preferring to keep an eye on everything from high above her, but sharing his sight whenever she wants. They’ve never needed each other for anything more than distant comfort.</p><p>Tonight they swoop lazily over snow-covered peaks. The mountains are laid out below, implacable and forbidding even at this height. There’s no pattern to the craggy peaks and valleys, though they try for a while to find one, tracing shapes into candy stone eroded by long ages of wind and cola. Snow gleams in the starlight, and turns blue-purple shadows forbidding and impenetrable. They’re careful to dip down every now and again for a pass over the castle, keeping it within eyeshot as much as they can bear without feeling claustrophobia creep over them again.</p><p>They climb in measured, purposeful wingbeats before nose diving straight back down into the cotton candy clouds that sweep slowly over the mountains. Cola mist coats their feathers and slicks their way as they drop further and further still, Castle Manylicks rising from the jagged ground to meet them. They complete a pass around the valley surrounding the castle when movement catches the corner of their eye.</p><p>Curiosity sends them dipping lower, and the figure resolves itself into a woman, and then into Ruby's — into the queen. </p><p>They follow Saccharina for a while, peeling away occasionally to fly circles around her, looking for the marauders, but she appears to be truly alone. A puff of smoke by Saccharina’s shoulder, and they amend that statement: alone except for the dragon.</p><p>They don’t have the best sense of time when they’re flying together, but Saccharina walks for a long time. She’s picked a gentler slope than what surrounds most of the castle, hospitable enough that there’s a treeline to try and hide behind. The path she's picking out is still deeply treacherous, off the main road to the castle, and Saccharina has to fly a few times to get by the more precarious sections. Cinnamon flutters above her after particularly tricky descent, but mostly he stays wrapped around Saccharina's shoulders. The trees end abruptly and they realize the ground has been evening out for some time. They navigate themselves onto a tree branch at the edge of clearing in a flutter of wings, but Saccharina doesn’t seem to notice. Cinnamon, on the other hand, cranes his neck like he’s looking for something. Instinctively, they hunch down in the evergreen sprinkles, but even the dragon settles as Saccharina completes a circuit of the clearing, then another. She starts on her third lap, and they give up, fluffing up for warmth and settling in to wait. </p><p>They’ve nearly dozed off when Saccharina stops abruptly feet away and rests Winterscoop against their tree. She takes the crown off her head. Cinnamon wraps his tail more firmly around Saccharina’s shoulder and down her arm for balance, but that’s all the motion for the next little while. Saccharina looks at the crown in her hands. </p><p>Eventually Cinnamon beeps quietly, and she turns her face into the dragon. Their ears are sharp, and they can easily hear her murmur reassurances to the dragon, coo at the noises he makes in return. “Queen or sister,” Saccharina whispers and Ruby tries to crane forward to hear better as Yak takes off.</p><p><em> What — wait, </em>Ruby protests, but Yak is implacable.</p><p>She tries to tug him back towards the clearing or even up towards the clouds that hang around the mountaintop, sending fruitless sense memories of flying low in the forest, sprinkle pines sugary and sharp around them. She’s still trying when he lands next to her body, tucked next to an ancillary building in the courtyard. </p><p>Ruby had climbed out of the window to escape her room, unwilling to navigate the maze of hallways to the front gate and the potential of running into any of Liam’s parents staying up late. She’d taken a warm cloak and she hadn’t physically left the protection of the castle walls because when the lesson is that excruciating, it is learned. Yak burrows now under that cloak and she doesn’t understand why until she feels the strange ghost-touch of her body against theirs, and then again, convulsive. She’s shivering.</p><p>The realization startles her back into her body and now she can feel Yak press against her, calling softly in concern. She pulls her knees up to her chin and ducks her face in between, curling around Yak as he fluffs up his feathers as much as he can, the roundest she’s ever seen a butterscotch hawk.</p><p>Warming up is miserable, because warming up means she can think again and the whole point of these flights is to let Yak do the thinking for both of them. She wishes she hadn’t been so quick to jump back, wishes she’d remembered she hates being in her body before she was back in it. Yak presses himself tighter to her. She’s sitting on her hands to try and warm them, but she uses the tip of her nose to stroke his soft little head and he trills contentedly. Ruby manages a smile, then remembers Saccharina is outside the castle walls, by herself.</p><p><em> Stupid</em>, Ruby thinks. She throws herself back into Yak, and can't. She recoils, nearly smacking the back of her head against the building she’d taken refuge behind. Yak ignores the indignant surprise she knows he can feel emanating from her even when she gets her half-frozen hands free and pulls the cloak from around him. She misses the warmth immediately and Yak must too because he screeches and flutters up to her shoulder, tucking himself into the crook of her neck as best as he can. Exasperation rolls off him in waves and Ruby thinks that’s very rich. </p><p>"We need to go make sure her royal hermitness doesn't get herself <em>stabbed</em>," she hisses as angrily as she can between chattering teeth.</p><p>Yak sends her his memory of feeling Ruby’s body shiver without her consciousness in it, and she groans, knocking her head back into the wall. "Great, sure, but what’s supposed to happen to Candia if Ciabatta finds her out there?"</p><p>Flashes of the areas they’d patrolled around the castle earlier tonight, unwelcoming cliffs and icy crags so treacherous that they'd found carcasses at the foot of several, butter toffee goats and what might have been a pavlova leopard, bones gleaming nauseatingly in starlight. Yak leans pointedly into Ruby’s jaw, his beak warm against her skin.</p><p>“Still,” Ruby mumbles, but her breath comes easier. </p><p>In her mind’s eye, Yak reminds her of seeing Saccharina and Gooey heading back to the marauders’ quarters after dinner, and Ruby gives in.</p><p>Yak helps her scale the wall to her room, hovering nearby as stiff fingers dig into cracks in the candy stone. She trips into her room, as cold inside as it is outside because she’d had to leave the window open. The castle is quiet enough at night to hear the wind roaring outside but the hallways are still warmer than her room. Ruby whispers invisibility over both of them as they head down the corridor to where the marauders are staying. </p><p><em> You must dread having another sister to fail.</em> Ruby breathes in through her nose. Sweet-smelling candy rush matting and the brown sugar of Yak's feathers. She's in Castle Manylicks. It was a dream. The Sugar Plum Fairy is dead and Ruby killed her. Ruby breathes out.</p><p><em> Another sister to fail. </em> She hasn't time to think about it like that, actually, she’s been trying to fucking mourn, she’ll never be done mourning. She walks quicker, trying to outpace her own thoughts.</p><p>Saccharina’s door is unguarded, but the door across from hers is open, and Ruby can’t resist poking her head in. Swifty stares back at her and she stifles a gasp. He spins a dagger in his hand but looks right through her. Gooey is asleep on the bed. If the marauders are still guarding the room, Saccharina must have left without even telling them, maybe sneaking out through the window.</p><p>Yak sends her the memory of Ruby doing the same. Ruby shuts her eyes against it, uselessly, and turns on her heel. She stands in front of Saccharina’s door. A spectral hand wisps off her clenched fist and Ruby instructs it to take a bit of loose candy stone and toss it hard into Swifty and Gooey’s room.</p><p>Too late, she wonders if Saccharina had locked her door, but the knob turns easily under her hand and she slips into Saccharina’s room while Swifty checks on the noise.</p><p>Ruby drops invisibility. In the light of the banked fire, she casts a flickering shadow. She heads deeper into the room, careful to match her steps to her shadow’s, still. It’s been less than a half hour since Ruby got back, and Saccharina had been pretty far away from the castle walls. It’s unreasonable to expect her back soon. If she isn’t back by sunrise, Ruby decides, then she’ll tell the marauders. </p><p>She could tell them now, Yak suggests.</p><p>She could. It's safer, and Swifty would get to Saccharina very quickly if Yak guided him to the clearing. </p><p><em> Queen or sister</em>.</p><p>I’m not a snitch, Ruby replies. Yak ruffles his feathers in the avian equivalent of a shrug.</p><p>Was Saccharina — she had to be the queen. She could only be the queen, there were days left until she was formally crowned, why was she still thinking about it, what was there to think about? Ruby knows Saccharina wants — wanted — to be close, but she'd made her choice. Ruby can't — she can't. Not when there's an open wound in her heart, not when it's so difficult to care about what’s splitting another person open.</p><p>Ruby beelines to the window for the cold breeze it offers, open like it had been in her room. Saccharina had definitely climbed out through here. A courtyard lays beneath her, one of the smaller ones that shelters Spearia's personal garden. Ruby's heard it's lovely in the summer but the garden is in the middle of being prepared for the winter now, pruners scattered in the yard for the final clipping of evergreen sprinkles and bêtise yews, and a line of covered wheelbarrows next to the shed which leaned against the wall that runs right angles to Saccharina's room. Yak caws softly and Ruby peers closer. Footprints in the snow on the ground, lightly jostled but not erased by the wind. This courtyard, unlike the one Ruby's bedroom overlooks, is protected from the elements.</p><p>And it's a good hiding place. Ruby swings herself down the wall, a little off-balance because Yak won't get off her shoulder, grinding his beak irritably in her ear while she makes her way to the shed. She'll be able to see Saccharina getting back, and Saccharina won't even realize Ruby was there. Ruby sends another mage hand to brush away her tracks in the snow and squeezes between the shed and the line of wheelbarrows. A hand brushes the soft heap on the wheelbarrows and she startles at the heat radiating off of it, until she peeks underneath and is hit with the buttery scent of candy soil. Mulch. </p><p>Yak grinds his beak a little harder at the smugness that goes with Ruby's discovery but when she settles with her back against the wall, wedged in between two wheelbarrows in a spot that is almost warm, he hops off her shoulder, satisfied that Ruby won't nearly freeze again. His talons prick across her lap as he settles against her belly. Ruby curls around him, and keeps watch.</p><hr/><p>“That’s not a very good hiding place.”</p><p>Ruby is on her feet before she has her eyes fully open. Yak flutters up in a screech that has her heart in her throat, but it’s only Saccharina — it’s <em> obviously </em> Saccharina, Ruby's in the courtyard below her quarters and Ruby had fallen asleep. Cinnamon stretches up from his perch on Saccharina’s shoulders to beep excitedly at Yak. Yak completes a circle in the air and settles onto the roof of the shed. He beeps back at Cinnamon in a way that suggests he wishes Cinnamon hadn’t seen that. </p><p>Ruby closes her eyes again, this time in mortification. At least she’s fully awake now.</p><p>“Are you...not cold?” </p><p>Ruby blinks in surprise. “Am I what?” Saccharina nods at the cloak tangled up in Ruby's shoes. “Oh — no. I mean, the wheelbarrows are filled with mulch, I'm fine. But mostly I don’t trust any horizontal surface in that castle.”</p><p>Saccharina huffs out a surprised laugh. She’s got the crown back on, Ruby notes, with some relief. Maybe she worked out whatever she needed to work out. "Not even the guest quarters?" </p><p>Ruby opens her mouth to explain, then promptly slams it shut. The story is long, and convoluted, and Saccharina chose queen after the ice cream temple and has chosen queen again. It's Ruby acting out of line.</p><p>“Well,” Saccharina continues. “Do you — it’s pretty late. Or early. We could get breakfast started now.”</p><p>“It won’t be ready,” Ruby says blankly. Yak gives her a mental nudge and Ruby groans when she catches bulbrise lightening the sky. "Well, scratch that."</p><p>“Let’s get breakfast,” Saccharina says. She smiles at Ruby. Not the careful, full of brimming hope smiles that are so hard to look at, but a rueful, tired little thing, shared instead of directed.</p><p>“Are — is this an order from my queen?”</p><p>Saccharina goes very, very still. Ruby’s not sure if Saccharina’s breathing. She’s not sure if she is. “No,” Saccharina says.</p><p>Ruby doesn’t let herself think. “Okay. Yes.”</p><p>Saccharina steps to the side so Ruby can maneuver out between the wheelbarrows. Yak flies overhead, lending quiet support. Ruby walks silently at Saccharina’s side all the way down to the kitchens where together, they’ll greet the new day.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>